I spoke about this briefly during the GodisaGeek podcast at Eurogamer, but I wanted to elaborate a little.

At the moment 3D is gaining a lot of attention, and rightly so. This is the next innovation in not only film, but television and games industries. The next “HD”, if you will. In the near future we’ll all be able to watch our favourite TV programs & movies and play our games with full 3D effects. It’s all about enhancing the viewing experience.

Right now there are two different technologies (as always) competing for market-share. You might call it competitive capitalism, I call it an annoyance. This is looking to be another ‘Betamax vs VHS’ or ‘HD-DVD vs BluRay’ all over again.

There are “passive” glasses, which are the kind which are currently in use in cinemas, these work by the screen displaying a slightly different image to each eye – two different ages. The glasses don’t require any kind of power, and are extremely cheap to produce. The downfall with this technology is that the resolution is limited, because of the passive glasses. Meaning you won’t see any HD content with this option. We’ve only just got HD into the mainstream, I don’t think we should be taking a step backwards. Unfortunately I don’t think general consumers will even know. Of course gamers will rant and rave to high heavens about this – not that gamers are pickier, they just know good quality when they see it .

The other type of glasses use shutter technology. These do need power, and basically they refresh the lenses rapidly. For such a high fps, the glasses require a monitor of 120hz or higher. Unfortunately most current monitors are only half that. 50 – 60hz are standard refresh rates for monitors, but if this were to change, we could be playing PC games in full HD and 3D. The problem here is that this is nVidia technology (GeForce 3D Vision), and requires one of their graphics cards – meaning this is an option for PC gamers only. You won’t be able to use shuttter glasses on a TV with a BluRay or games console any time soon. The good thing is that GeForce 3D Vision supports all new game releases, the hardware converts the games to full 3D on-the-fly.

It looks like PC gamers will get the fuller package for the moment, and tv/film views and console gamers will be left with the lower resolution option. In all honesty television has been poor quality for years (until HDTV), and console games have always had lower quality graphics than PC games. But is this something we want to encourage more of?

There is actually 3rd technology, but nobody can get it right at the moment. This is 3D television without the need for glasses. Not only are there resolution problems, but in order for this to work, you have to sit directly in front of the TV. If you move slightly to either side, you lose the 3D effect and end up with blur. Obviously this technology is going nowhere for now, but we can hope for it to mature.

At the moment there are only two 120hz monitors available on the market, one from ViewSonic and the other from Samsung. Unfortunately their both 22inch, and neither of which feature higher resolutions than 1680×1050 (that’s right, no 1080p). Saying that, they are surprisingly cheap, both coming in at around £200.

Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision is only about £120. As a gaming peripheral that’s pretty acceptable. I guess it’s just a waiting game now. As soon as I can replace my 27″ TFT with one that supports 120hz, I’m grabbing a GeForce 3D Vision and getting my game on!